5D vs 20D: Wide Angle Shootout

This article and all the photographs in it is by Rom Prakash, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

Since I own both the Canon EF-S 10-22/3.5-4.5 and the EF 17-40/4.0L, and the EOS-20D and EOS-5D, I thought it was time for me to test them for myself. I saw some tests between the EF 16-35/2.8L and 10-22 on the Fred Miranda forum, but nothing on the 17-40 and 10-22 so far.

Testing methodology

• Both cameras were mounted on tripods.
• No UV filter on either lens.
• Remote Cable Release used.
• No mirror lock-up used (forgot to, but I don't think it has a bearing on the results). [ I agree. - Petteri ]
• White Balance was set to Daylight on both Cameras.
• Shot in RAW, converted in Adobe Camera RAW at default conversion settings, with no extra sharpening.

The test shots

I shot two pairs of test shots. The first is at f/11 on both lenses, and the second is at f/4. They are two separate subjects.

The f/11 shots are shot at ISO 400 as I didn't want the wind to interfere with a low shutter speed. Noise on both bodies is fairly good at ISO 400, and I'm not really interested in a noise test.

The f/4 shots were shot at ISO 100.

I tried to nudge the 10-22 a little less than half way between the 10 and 12 marking to try to get closer to 11 mm, to match the fields of view between the cameras and lenses better.